91 Princess Mary’s present to Mistress Elizabeth Garret on her marriage was “A gold broach with one bolace of the history of Susanne.” Another gift is mentioned in her list of jewels in the following entry: “A broach of gold enamelled black, with an agate of the story of Abraham—with iii small rock rubies—Given to Sir Anthony Brown, drawing her Grace as his valentine.”
These gifts were presented to the bride and bridegroom on 10th December, in the thirty-third year of Henry’s reign. The youthful bride could not have been more than fifteen years of age, and Sir Anthony was not much under sixty.
92 Hentzner also saw the bedchamber in which Henry VIII died, but this was late in Elizabeth’s reign, when it was shown as one of the “lions” of the palace, a fact which tends to prove that the apartment was never again used by any other sovereign, but kept as a sort of show-place.
93 In his youth Henry’s eyes had been considered fine. In the picture by Paris Bordone, belonging to the Merchant Taylors’ Company, they are a light grey and decidedly good in colour and shape.
94 Edward VI was never officially proclaimed Prince of Wales—the document doing so was prepared, but was delayed by the death of his father. None the less, he is frequently so styled in the last years of Henry’s reign.
95 Dr. Wendy became physician to Elizabeth. He died in 1560 at Haslingford Court, a manor given to him by Henry VIII.
96 Dr. Gale was living as late as 1586. He wrote a curious work entitled The Office of a Chirurgeon, which gives a dreadful picture of warfare in the sixteenth century. See for an account of this rare work, once possessed by the author, The Medical Biography, p. 65.
97 Father Thiveter, a Franciscan, who obtained some curious facts concerning the death of Henry VIII, presumably from Princess Mary, wrote an account of that event which has been occasionally reprinted.
98 The Queen had sent him a picture of the King, his father, and of herself, in one frame. Edward was so delighted with the present that he said he preferred it to gold-embroidered robes and other things most priceless: “Quamobrem majores tibi gratias ego ob hanc strenam, quam si misisses ad me preciosas vestes, aut aurum celatum, aut quidvis aliud eximium.”
99 “Thursday,” writes Aubrey, “was a fatal day to Henry VIII, and so also to his posterity. He died on Thursday, January 28; King Edward VI on Thursday, July 6; Queen Mary on Thursday, November 17; and Queen Elizabeth on Thursday, March 24.”
100 During the last year of Henry’s reign Edward had resided at Hatfield with his sister Elizabeth. Very early in December it was deemed advisable, owing to the precarious state of the King’s health, to remove the young Prince from Hatfield, first to Tittenhanger House, in Hertfordshire, and then to Hertford itself. His various removals can be traced from the dates of his letters to his father, to the Queen, and to the Princesses his sisters. On 5th December, for instance, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth from Tittenhanger lamenting his enforced absence from her. And later, on the 18th, he wrote another in the same strain; but on 10th January he addressed his sister Mary a Latin letter from Hertford, and on the same day the epistle already mentioned to Queen Katherine. Elizabeth, in the meantime, was relegated to Enfield Chase, where she remained until she joined Queen Katherine at Chelsea, after Henry’s death.
101 King Francis I, notwithstanding Henry’s unorthodox opinions and his notorious revolt from Rome, ordered a Requiem to be said in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris for the repose of the soul of his well-beloved brother, Henry VIII, King of England, at which service he assisted; he also left in his will a sum of money to be devoted to Masses to be said in perpetuity for the same pious purpose. A Mass is still offered every year in the Metropolitan Church of Paris for the repose of the soul of our “Bluff King Hal,” the custom having survived even the Reign of Terror.
102 These noble ladies were not present in any official capacity, but simply “to pray for the soul of the departed King.” It was not the custom for women to attend the funeral of a male, except as an act of devotion. They wore on these occasions black cloth gowns and black cloaks and hoods or silk scarfs. This costume was general at funerals, and especially in the country, until the end of the first half of the last century.
103 Her separate establishment was formed early in March, and she then took up her residence at Chelsea; but she may well have hovered between Whitehall and the Manor House for some weeks after the King’s death, whilst her future residence was being put in readiness for her.
104 The King’s will was dated 26th December 1546, and revoked all other previous wills that he might have made. The original was not in Henry’s own hand, but written in a book of stout paper, and was, it is said, signed by His Majesty’s stamp as well as his autograph. It should be remembered that because the act of attainder against the Duke of Norfolk had merely a stamp affixed to it by Paget, the said attainder was in 1553 treated as null and void, and the Duke, after his liberation, at once resumed his seat in the House of Lords.
105 This significant allusion to “any other wives he might have” inclines one to think that had His Majesty lived to seventy or eighty, he may have contemplated having twelve instead of six wives!
106 King Henry’s will is said to have been inspired not only by the Earl of Hertford and his party, but by the Queen, Katherine Parr. This, however, is scarcely probable, since if she had had a hand in the matter she would assuredly have caused a paragraph to have been inserted appointing her Regent during the minority of her stepson. Marillac, the French Ambassador, informs us in his “Notes” that when Katherine discovered that she was not so nominated she gave way to a great outburst of indignation and temper.
107 See the Losely MSS, edited by A. J. Kempe. John Murray, 1835.
108 His position as Protector was not officially ratified until 22nd March.
109 As a matter of fact, the royal corpse was, owing to its weight, not enclosed in a lead shell until it reached Windsor, so that the chronicler has made a mistake; but the fact that it was in a mere wooden case lends support to the above horrible story. Strype, it is true, declares in his Memorials, which include a very minute account of Henry VIII’s funeral, that the body was enclosed in lead before it was placed in the coffin, thus unintentionally supporting the story of the leakage of blood; but the plumbers’ bill for the soldering of the leaden coffin of King Henry VIII at Windsor is still extant among the Royal Household receipts and expenses.
110 After the execution of Thomas Seymour, this fine mansion was purchased for £41, 6s. 8d. by Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, whose only son, Lord Maltravers, was a paragon of learning and accomplishments. He predeceased his father by nearly twenty years. On the death of the Earl of Arundel the property passed to his daughter, Mary, Duchess of Norfolk, and through her the ground-rents are still payable to the premier Duchy of England. The unfortunate Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was attainted for his religious opinions in the reign of Elizabeth, and who died in exile, lived here for some time. In the eighteenth century the famous Arundel marbles, now at Cambridge, were to be seen at Arundel House, which was finally pulled down and a number of rather mean streets built on its site. Quite recently the property has been immensely improved, and in fairly artistic taste. One or two very fine hotels—the Howard and the Arundel, for instance—have been erected on the site of the old palace. The Colonial and American guests at these excellent establishments will perhaps be interested to know that that favourite heroine of history, Lady Jane Grey, dwelt hereabouts.
111 State Papers, 1537, under Seymour.
112 It is possible that Henry VIII intended, when he married Jane Seymour, not to allow his mother-in-law to interfere in his concerns. Some such thing happened with regard to Lady Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn’s mother, who is very little heard of after her daughter’s marriage.
113 Lord Hertford clandestinely married Lady Jane Grey’s second sister, Lady Katherine, and was imprisoned for many years in the Tower by Elizabeth’s order “for venturing to marry an heiress to the throne.”
114 When this proposal was eventually made to the boy-King, he was highly indignant, and remarks in his Journal that it “was his intention to choose for his Queen a foreign princess well stuffed and jewelled”—meaning that his bride should be endowed with a suitable dower and a regal wardrobe.
Lady Jane Seymour died early in the reign of Elizabeth, one of whose maids-of-honour she was, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
115 Hayward (Life of Edward VI) describes Sudeley as “fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty in matter”(!).
116 The Queen alludes here not, as generally supposed, to the Lady Frances Brandon, but to her stepmother, the witty Duchess Katherine, who uses this curious expression in one of her letters.
117 This belief received confirmation in a letter of “Kateryn the Quene” to the Lord Admiral in which she says, “When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, ye must take some pains to come early in the morning, that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock; and so I suppose ye may come hither without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over-night at what hour ye will come, that your portress [i.e. herself] may wait at the gate of the fields for you.” This letter is signed, “By her that is and shall be, your humble, true, and loving wife during her life.” This was written from Chelsea Manor House after Henry VIII’s death.
118 From one of Fowler’s letters to Sudeley we learn that “His Highness the King is not half a quarter of an hour by himself,” and that “in his secret leisure His Grace hath written his commendations to the Queen’s Grace and to your lordship [Sudeley].” Moreover, he says that the King intends to write letters “whenever he can do so, that is, when there is no supervision kept over his actions.” Enclosed in this letter from Fowler were two notes written in Edward’s childish hand on torn scraps of paper. The first is a request for money: “My Lord, send me per Latimer [another go-between] as much as ye think good, and deliver it to Fowler.—Edward.” On the second is written: “My Lord, I thank you and pray you have me commended to the Queen.”
119 Strype’s Memoirs, vol. ii. part i. p. 59.
120 See the State Papers.
121 This lady was a daughter of Humphrey Bouchier, Lord Berners, and wife of Sir Thomas Bryan or Brian. She was the “my lady maistress” of Princess Mary, whose Privy Purse Expenses contain several items to her credit—as in January 1537: “Item paid for a broach and a frontlet and the same given to my lady maistress, xxxviij.” Lady Bryan or Brian was for a time governess to Princess Elizabeth as well as to Prince Edward. She was created a Baroness in her own right, but does not appear from her correspondence and petitions to have had sufficient income to support the dignity of a peeress. This able lady died on 20th August 1551 at Leyton, in Essex. (See Strype’s Appendix to Stowe’s Survey of London for 1720, vol. ii. p. 114.)
122 Mrs. Sybel or Sybilla Penn, dry nurse to Edward VI, was not, as erroneously stated by Gough Nichols in his Literary Remains of Edward VI, the daughter of Sir Hugh Pagenham or the wife of John Penne, barber-surgeon to Henry VIII, but the daughter of William Hampton of Dodyngton, Buckinghamshire, and owed her appointment as dry nurse and foster-mother to the future King to the good offices of Sir William Sydney. She married Mr. David Penn, and continued at Court after the death of Edward, being very kindly treated by both Mary and Elizabeth. She had an apartment in Hampton Court Palace, and died there in 1562 of the smallpox, at the same time that Elizabeth herself was attacked by that dreadful malady. She is buried in Hampton Church, and is said to haunt the palace because her bones were disturbed when the position of her monument was altered many years ago (1820). Mrs. Penn’s spirit was greatly displeased at this removal, and forthwith took to haunting the palace she had inhabited for so many years. Her ghost has been seen ascending the stairs as recently as 1896, when she nearly scared the attendant out of his wits. The well-known sketch by Holbein signed “Mother Jack” is supposed to be a portrait of this lady, but Sir Richard Holmes, the late learned Librarian at Windsor Castle, disputes this opinion, and attributes another portrait to her. (See Ernest Law’s History of Hampton Court Palace. George Bell & Sons. Tudor Period, p. 197 et seq.)
123 Edward’s friend and companion, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, was the eldest son of the Irish chieftain, Barnaby Gill Patrick, Lord of Upper Ossory, who made his submission to the King in 1537, and was created a Baron by his old title in 1541. Barnaby’s mother was the widow of Thomas Fitzgerald, a grandson of the Earl of Desmond. Barnaby, who was brought up with Edward, was sent for a year’s education to the French Court: whilst there he received many letters from his royal friend. On his return to England Barnaby Fitzpatrick continued to enjoy the King’s favour. After Edward’s death he entered the service of Mary and went to fight in Scotland. Under Elizabeth, Barnaby, who had by this time become Baron of Upper Ossory, fought for the Queen in Ireland, and actually slew Oge O Moarda, or Rory O’More, one of the great rebels of the day. Barnaby Fitzpatrick died in 1581 without issue, and was succeeded by his brother, Florence, whose descendants enjoyed the title of Upper Ossory until the extinction of the peerage in 1818. (See for further particulars of his career John Gough Nichols’ Literary Remains of Edward VI, p. 64. Printed for the Roxburgh Club.)
124 Sir John Cheke was an early forerunner of President Roosevelt, for not only did he reform the pronunciation of Greek, but he actually instituted a reform of English orthography. His suggestions for the simplification of our writing were very curious and worth detailing. Firstly, there was to be no e at the end of words, so he wrote excus, giv, hay, and so on. Secondly, when a is sounded long, he would have had it doubled, as maad, straat (made, straight), etc. Thirdly, he replaced y by i, as mi, sai, awai, for my, say, away! The rest of the language was phoneticised, as britil (brittle), frute (fruit), and so on. He translated part of the Bible into his new English, a copy of which is now at Cambridge.
125 Wriothesley having now become Earl of Southampton, evidently hoped to represent for some time in the Privy Council the old faith—i.e. schismatic—as it had been under Henry VIII, probably with the view of eventually modifying it into the ancient Roman Catholicism which had been the religion of his youth. But as he showed the extent of his ambition by putting the Great Seal into commission without the authority of his colleagues, he offended Somerset and gave him the opportunity of getting a dangerous competitor out of the way by arresting Wriothesley on a vague charge of treason and ordering him to confine himself to his own house in the Strand. With the same intention of “clearing the board,” the Protector had Winchester also arrested and thrown into the Tower.
126 There is a very minute account of Edward VI’s coronation (from an MS. at the College of Arms) in Nichols’ Literary Remains of Edward VI. The Spanish Chronicle also gives a curious description of it, where the writer says (p. 153 et seq.) that at the cross in Cheapside there was a triumphal arch “made to look like the sky,” whence descended a boy “like an angel,” who gave the King a purse containing £1000, which His Majesty handed over to the captain of the guard, much to the astonishment of the people; the chronicler significantly adds that the boy-King “had not the strength” to carry this weighty gift. The way from the Abbey to Westminster Hall was spread with “fine cloth”—“at least twenty lengths”—and “the moment the King passed these cloths disappeared, for whoever could cut a piece off took it for himself.” The Spaniard makes the curious mistake of saying that Henry VIII’s death was not made known to the public until after Edward’s coronation. (The coronation to which the Chronicler referred was that called the first coronation, which took place in the Tower on the 31st January. The King’s death was not generally known until then.—M. H.)
A large contemporary picture of Edward VI’s coronation procession was destroyed in a fire at Cowdray House (the home of the Montagu family) in 1793; but in the engraving of it made previously by the Society of Antiquaries we perceive a man bearing a cross leading the troop of knights, etc., preceding the King—another proof of the persistence of the old religious customs.
127 Of this man Strype says: “He was entertained here [England] divers years with the Earl of Bedford; and expecting preferment here, failing of it, he departed and lived abroad.” This certainly does not put Master Peter’s reason for coming to this country in quite such a good light as his description of himself as “an exile from Italy ... by reason of his confession of the doctrine of the Gospel.” See Strype’s Annals, iii. i. 660.
128 Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, written during the Reigns of King Henry VIII, etc. Edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. Hastings Robinson, D.D., F.S.A. Cambridge, 1847. They are generally called “The Zurich Letters.”
129 Anne Boleyn was very dark. Froude mentions her “blonde tresses”—but they were really raven black; her eyes were black and velvety. Elizabeth’s hair may have been black, but the habit of dyeing the hair golden and Venice red was universal, even for children, at this period. The magnificent portrait by Lucas de Heere at Hampton Court represents the young Queen with dark hair and eyes.
130 “Considerable confusion exists as to the identity of some of these historical houses. Messrs. Wheatley and Cunningham, in their most useful London Past and Present, seem to think that Sir Thomas More resided in Chelsea Manor before Katherine Parr came to live there. After the execution of More his estate at Chelsea was confiscated by Henry VIII and given to the Marquess of Winchester. Chelsea New Manor, which was inhabited by Katherine Parr and others,—and, under the Commonwealth, by Bulstrode Whitelock,—came into the hands of the Duke of Buckingham, who sold it to the Duke of Beaufort (hence Beaufort Street). It was purchased in 1738 by Sir Hans Sloane, who pulled it down in 1740. There is, moreover, local tradition, and even historical evidence, that there were two distinct manors at Chelsea in the first half of the sixteenth century—Chelsea New Manor, and Chelsea Old Manor. Dr. King, in his MS. account of Chelsea, says that the ‘old manor-house stood near the church.’ This is the house associated with the deaths of Anne of Cleves and of the old Duchess of Northumberland. He mentions another house, Chelsea New Manor, standing on that part of Cheyne Walk which adjoins Winchester House, and extends as far as ‘Don Saltero’s coffee house.’ ‘This house was built by Henry VIII as a nursery for his children, and here Katherine Parr lived.’ A picture of it in Faulkner’s Chelsea shows it not unlike St. James’s Palace. Small turrets communicate with the chimneys; the windows are long and high, and one of them has a Tudor arch on top. On the site of the present Durham House, Durham Terrace, the town residence of Sir Bruce and Lady Seton, there stood, not so many years ago, an ancient wainscoted house with a fine staircase, rather mysteriously connected by report with Jane Grey, who, according to a local tradition, lived here before she was made queen. In the beginning of the century this house was made a fashionable school for young ladies, but was pulled down in 1860 to make room for the present mansion.”—Mr. Richard Davey’s Pageant of London, vol. i. p. 379.
131 Deposition of Mrs. Ashley in the Hatfield State Papers.
132 There are several versions of this story. For instance, Henry Clifford, a retainer of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, says, in his MS. Life of that lady (London, Burns & Oates, 1887) that “In King Edward’s time what passed between the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, and her [Elizabeth] Dr. Latimer preached in a sermon, and was a chief cause that the Parliament condemned the Admiral. There was a bruit of a child born and miserably destroyed, but could not be discovered whose it was; only the report of the midwife, who was brought from her house blindfold thither, and so returned, saw nothing in the house while she was there, but candle light; only she said, it was the child of a very fair young lady. There was a muttering of the Admiral and this lady, who was then between fifteen and sixteen years of age.”
133 Among the guests at Sudeley at this period, with whom Lady Jane must have come into contact, was the Marchioness of Northampton, wife of William Parr, the Queen’s only brother. This unfortunate lady, who was closely allied with the Crown, had been so indiscreet that when her marriage came to be dissolved her children were declared illegitimate. She was living apart from her husband at the time of this visit to Sudeley. The Tudor great ladies were distinctly “mixed” in their love affairs, and Lady Northampton has been saddled with perhaps the worst reputation of any woman of her time; yet the Spanish Chronicle, which, as already remarked, contains much personal “back-stair” gossip, reveals some curious facts about this lady’s behaviour, and shows that a great part of the blame rests on the Marquis her husband, who, on altogether insufficient evidence, accepted a story of her having misconducted herself with a man-servant. See the Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England, etc. (the Spanish Chronicle), chap. lxii. p. 137 et seq., translated by Major Martin Hume.
134 Inventory of furniture and other goods at Sudeley Castle. Dated 1547–8.
135 See Latimer’s Sermons in Strype’s Memorials.
136 Haynes’ State Papers, p. 104.
137 Robert Huycke, or Huicke, was an M.A. of Oxford. He was divorced from his wife in 1546, and later married again. In 1550 Edward VI made him his physician extraordinary at the munificent salary of £50 per annum. Huycke was greatly in favour with Elizabeth, and she gave him a house near Enfield. He died near Charing Cross in (it is believed) 1581.
138 This interesting account shows how many Catholic customs still survived—the offering here mentioned is evidently a relic of the Offertory at the Requiem Mass, otherwise explained; and the candles also are distinctly a part of Roman Catholic ritual, though Coverdale’s account of their signification is not altogether that given by Catholics. The Te Deum is no longer sung or said at either Catholic or Anglican funerals. The fact that the writer of this account mentions that the whole service was done in one morning, shows that the brevity of the new form of worship was somewhat of a novelty to people accustomed to the long series of Dirges and Masses accompanying burials in Catholic times. Sir Walter Besant says, on p. 154 of his London in the Time of the Tudors, “Before the coming of the Puritans the funerals continued with much of the old (Catholic) ritual.”
139 Froude says, “The Lady Frances, now that the Queen was dead, no longer thought the Admiral’s house a becoming residence for her daughter and sent for her.” The Lady Frances did nothing of the sort; Sudeley himself first suggested the Lady Jane’s removal to her parents’ custody.
140 Hatfield MSS.
141 Hatfield MSS.
142 Hatfield MSS.
143 Sir William Sharington or Sherington was one of the most benighted frauds of this age, albeit a very successful one. He was born about 1495, and was of good Norfolk family. In 1546 he became vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint, being created a Knight of the Bath at Edward VI’s coronation. Once installed in this office, he made a sort of “corner” in West-Country Church plate, which he bought cheap from the Somerset villagers, and coined into “testons” or shillings of two-thirds alloy. By this means, and by shearing and clipping coins, falsifying the account books of the Mint, the originals of which he destroyed, and by other cheating, he managed to amass £4000 (an enormous sum in those days) in three years. Probably fearing that Sudeley, whose friend he was, might reveal these affairs to his brother the Protector, Sir William lent the Lord Admiral money, placed the Bristol Mint at his disposal, and, as we shall see, helped him in his nefarious schemes. He bought manors in Wiltshire from the King for £2808; but he was arrested on 19th January 1548–9. He was questioned in the Tower, but denied the charge of conniving at Sudeley’s intrigues. In February, however, he turned traitor to the Lord Admiral and admitted all, throwing himself on the King’s mercy. He was pardoned in acts of 30th December 1549 and of 13th January 1550. He now somewhat settled down, buying back with a part of the purchase-money given by the French for Boulogne, which money had got into his hands, his confiscated manors and lands, some of which he presented to the King—likely enough the reason why Latimer, in a sermon preached before His Majesty in 1551, described this admitted cheat as “an honest gentilman and one that God loveth”(!!). Sharington got himself appointed Sheriff of Wiltshire, and died in 1551. There is a portrait of him by Holbein in the Royal Library at Windsor. He was married three times, but left no children.
144 Vide Dorset’s deposition in the Hatfield MSS.
145 Nothing could be more forcible as a proof of the manner in which Sudeley, in the style of the Duke of Northumberland at a later period, threatened and bullied any who dared to oppose him, than the following story. About the time that he was endeavouring to supplant his brother in Edward’s affections, he tried to induce the boy-King to write a letter for him to the Parliament, which was to meet in the November of that year. It was suggested that Parliament might not grant his demands; whereupon, said “my Lord of Sudeley,” “I will make [it, if that be so] the blackest Parliament that has ever been seen in England”—“blackest” perhaps meaning “the most humbled and depressed” Parliament ever seen, which shows that Sudeley was sufficiently self-confident to believe that he could coerce whole bodies of administrators at his will.
146 Sudeley’s nefarious assistant, Sharington, Sir Thomas Parry, John Fowler, and Mrs. Ashley were all imprisoned in the Tower at the same time as Sudeley.
147 Sudeley’s connection and connivance at the frauds perpetrated by Sir William Sharington was also made a count of his indictment.
148 Queen Elizabeth stated at a later date that “the Admiral’s life would have been saved had not the Council dissuaded the Protector from granting him an interview.” In face of these statements, there would seem to be little doubt that the Protector, if left to himself, might have visited a less severe sentence on his brother.
The Protector’s wife evidently bore in her time a very bad reputation for intriguing and interference, for Hayward (Life of Edward VI, p. 82) says the troubles between Sudeley and his brother were mainly due to the quarrel (already mentioned) between Katherine Parr and her Ladyship—“to the unquiet vanity of a mannish, or rather a devilish woman [Lady Somerset] ... for many imperfections intolerable, but for pride monstrous.”
149 As to the unfortunate Seymour’s infant child, we learn that after his death it was carried to Somerset’s house at Sion, whence, after a short time, it was conveyed to the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, at Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire. She had been at one time the dearest friend of Katherine Parr. Here the child had a governess, Mrs. Aglyonby, and was also attended by a nurse, two maids, and many other servants, in accordance with her high rank. The Duke of Somerset had promised that a certain pension should be settled on his niece, and that her nursery plate and furniture, which had been brought up from Sudeley to Sion House, should be sent after her to Grimsthorpe. He pledged his word on this point to the Duchess of Somerset’s gentleman, Mr. Bertie, who subsequently married his mistress, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk; but the promise was never redeemed. The Duchess herself did not show much maternal tenderness to the child of her quondam friend. In the second year of Edward VI she wrote a curious letter to Cecil, begging him to relieve her of the guardianship of the child of the late Queen. She says: “The late Queen’s child hath lain, and yet doth lay in my house with her company about her, wholly in my charge.” Then she accuses Somerset of not sending money for the child’s maintenance, and adds: “And that ye may better understand that I cry not before I am pricked, I send you Mistress Glensborough’s [the governess’s] letter unto me, who, with her maids, nourice, and others daily call upon me for their wages, whose voices mine ears may hardly bear, but my coffers much worse.” She declares she is ill, and hopes that the child will be removed at an early date. There is a very long list in the Lansdowne MSS of plate, hangings, and even musical instruments, belonging to this child, which the Lord Protector took and never restored. Cecil paid little attention to the Duchess’s application. In all probability he never answered her letter at all. At a later date she wrote to the Marquis of Northampton, the infant’s uncle, and begged him to receive her. He behaved even more heartlessly than the Duchess, declaring he would neither receive the child nor her attendants at his house. Thus Katherine Parr’s own brother and the Duchess of Somerset, her old friend, whose life she had actually saved on one occasion from the fury of Henry VIII, besides spending considerable sums out of her private means to publish the ungrateful woman’s devotional writings, actually refused food and shelter to her orphaned child. It is impossible now to fully trace the child’s eventful history. Strype asserts that she died young, but there is much reason to believe that she lived and married Sir Edward Bushel, a gentleman of family, who was in attendance upon Queen Anne of Denmark, the Consort of James I. His only daughter married Silas Johnson, and their daughter married into the Lawson family, an old Suffolk house, which until quite recently possessed a number of Tudor relics, which, their proprietors alleged and amply proved, originally belonged to their ancestress, the daughter of Katherine Parr and the Admiral Seymour, a baby doubtless often caressed by the gentle Jane Grey. At the close of the seventeenth century some hundreds of papers belonging to the Lawson family were unfortunately destroyed by a thoughtless widow. However, an existing copy of the family pedigree proves almost beyond doubt that the Lawson version of the fate of Seymour’s daughter was accurate in every detail. One thing is evident, that the infant suffered a good deal of neglect in her childhood, and that she was passed on from one unwilling relative to another, until at last some kindly soul took compassion on her desolate state, and brought about a match between her and Sir Edward Bushel.
150 The letter in which Ab Ulmis does this will be found in the Parker Society’s edition of the Reformers’ letters, vol. ii. p. 406, and is dated 30th April 1550. It simply overflows with flattery of the Marquis, who is described as “the thunderbolt and terror of the Papists, that is, a fierce and terrible adversary.... He is much looked-up to by the King. He is learned and speaks Latin with elegance. He is the protector of all students, and the refuge of foreigners. He maintains at his own house the most learned men; he has a daughter, about fourteen years of age, who is pious and accomplished beyond what can be expressed; to whom I hope shortly to present your book on the holy marriage of Christians, which I have almost entirely translated into Latin. You may adopt this form of dedication to the book: ‘To Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, Baron Ferrers of Groby, Harrington, Bonville and Astley, one of His Majesty’s Privy Council, and my most honoured lord, &c. &c.’” So far as can be discovered, neither Jane Grey nor the Marquis her father wrote to thank Bullinger for this work, no letter to this effect being extant.
In the December of the following year (1551) the Marquis of Dorset wrote to Bullinger from London (Zurich Letters, Parker Society, vol. i. p. 3) to thank him for “the book which you have published under the auspices of my name,” but this volume was one of Bullinger’s Decades, dedicated to his Lordship in the preceding March.
151 Zurich Letters (Parker Society), vol. i. p. 6.
152 The above-quoted Latin letter to Henry Bullinger was written when she was only fourteen.
154 A very fine portrait of this lady was formerly in the possession of the late Martin Colnaghi, Esq. It represents a handsome matron of fifty, dressed in the costume of the period. She has regular features, light eyes, and auburn hair. The picture is dated 1552, the year of the Suffolk family’s last visit to Walden. Lady Audley’s only child married that Duke of Norfolk who was executed under Elizabeth for his attempt to assist Mary Stuart to escape from Tutbury Castle.
155 The gay festivities at Tylsey were a matter of some annoyance to Aylmer, and to the chaplain at Bradgate, Haddon, who feared their distracting effect on the minds of their pupils, Jane and Katherine Grey.
156 Zurich Letters, vol. ii. pp. 447–8.
157 Ulmer wrote to Conrad Pellican in the summer of 1552 (Zurich Letters, p. 451) that “Our Duke (Suffolk) has been staying for the last few days at an estate here in the neighbourhood of Oxford, which has come to him by inheritance from the late Duke of Suffolk.” The “late Duke of Suffolk” refers to the Lady Frances’s half-brother, who has been already frequently mentioned. Ulmer continues: “I waited upon him and paid my respects, according to the custom of the University.” Edward VI being at that time in the neighbourhood, Jane was presented to him, and “received with great favour.”